Obama Calls Muslim Violence Just “Bumps in the Road,” Downgrades Israel to “One of” Our Strongest Allies in the Region

Sep 24, 2012

RUSH: So Obama says he’s not gonna meet with Morsi, the president of Egypt, the grand pooh-bah of the Muslim Brotherhood. You know what probably happened? He probably called Morsi and said, “Look, I’ll have a lot more flexibility after the election.” The same thing he told Putin. Well, he told Medvedev to tell Putin. He said, (imitating Obama) “You tell Morsi I’ll have a lot more flexibility after the election. It probably would hurt me to be seen meeting with you now since I blew off Netanyahu. So I gotta make it look like I’m blowing you off, and I’ll just go on over to The View and hang around with the babes over there, and that’s it.”

That’s one version. There’s another possibility that it wasn’t Obama who canceled the meeting with Morsi. It could well be the other way around. After all, Obama still hasn’t arrested the movie maker. He still hasn’t handed over the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman. It could be Morsi who’s calling the shots in this relationship. It’s Obama who bows down to these Arab guys. He did. He bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. He bows down to these guys. So it could well be that Morsi is the one calling the shots. Morsi, I’ve got the story somewhere here in the stack, Morsi is out there telling us that we have to change our ways. If we expect Egypt to like us, we have to change our ways. And they’re saying the same thing in Pakistan. Similar comments are coming out of Pakistan in the same vein. I don’t know. Time will tell.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Jay Carney, the spokesman the White House, just said he’s highly offended that anyone would be critical of Obama saying that the deaths of those four Americans at the Libyan consulate are “bumps in the road.” It’s what he said! It’s what Obama said! He was on 60 Minutes last night and it’s what he said. Well, all these things that happened are just “bumps in the road.” Does that…?

Look, I… (sigh) Why does it always have to be me to say this? Why is it always me? (interruption) I guess it is. I guess it is my destiny. Actually in this, I’m not the only one to say this. After Obama’s little Rose Garden appearance after the death of the ambassador, when he walked away and ignored the question, “Mr. President, is this an act of war?” there were a number of people who observed that he was strikingly unfazed.

It was just something he had to go out there and report and act solemn about, but there didn’t seem to be like a whole lot of emotional attachment to this. This whole Benghazi thing has fallen apart now. Everybody is jumping all over the White House now. “Why did you guys lie about this for a week? Why did you lie that that thing was a ‘spontaneous eruption’ from a video when everybody knows that it was planned a couple or three days in advance with hundreds of people involved?”

Susan Rice made a fool of herself, but she was only going out doing what Obama and the rest told her to do last Sunday on the Sunday shows. I’ll tell you what. Let’s go back and get sound bites eight and nine first. I changed my mind. We put that montage together last week of all the hard-hitting questions Obama got at Univision from Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas. We’re gonna play it again and we’re gonna play it with a montage of softballs that Steve Kroft asked Obama last night. So let’s go back to the archives, to the Grooveyard of Forgotten Favorites.

Here is a montage of first-time ever questions in four years that Obama got last Thursday, Coral Gables, at Univision…

SALINAS: (via translator) Do you have information indicating that it was Iran, or al Qaeda, who was behind organizing the protests?

RAMOS: (via translator) At the beginning of your governing, you had control of both chambers of Congress, and yet you did not introduce immigration reform. And before I continue, I want for you to acknowledge that you did not keep your promise.

RAMOS: I don’t want it to get lost in translation: You promised that, and a promise is a promise — and with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise.

SALINAS: (via translator) Mr. President, you have been the president who has made the largest number of deportations in history, more than 1.5 million so far. You’ve separated many families.

SALINAS: (via translator) Some of your critics to say that it was just only to win the Hispanic vote. Why didn’t you do that earlier during your presidency?

ALCORTA: (via translator) Mr. President, I am a student at the journalism school at UM. This is my question to you: What would you recommend to Latina women such as I in order to be successful in my search for employment in the United States?

SALINAS: (via translator) You have supported [Mexican] President Calderon’s policy against drug trafficking. Do you think that after 65,000 deaths it’s time to change the strategy? Can you consider the 65,000 a failure and the policy should change?

OBAMA: Uh, thatÂ’s why —

SALINAS: (via translator) How many more people have to die?

RAMOS: Shouldn’t Attorney General Eric Holder have known about that? And if he didn’t, should you fire him?

RAMOS: So if you have nothing to hide, then why are you not releasing papers?

RUSH: Yeah. Obama never gets those questions the American media. And, by the way, his answers (we played those, too) were mostly evasions or lies. Now, here is Steve Kroft last night on 60 Minutes, and it’s all Obama: Do you worry…? How do you feel…? Are you gonna work with these nasty Republicans?

Just compare the line of questioning you just heard on Univision with what happened last night.

KROFT: Mr. President, people are afraid for their jobs. I know you know that.

KROFT: The jobs bill, you haven’t been able to get it through Congress!

KROFT: How are you going to get the Republicans to agree to a tax increase?

KROFT: Do you still believe, after three years and this gridlock, that we have that somebody who claims to be an outsider can get things accomplished in Washington?

KROFT: How much pressure have you been getting from Prime Minister Netanyahu to make up your mind to use military force in Iran?

KROFT: You don’t feel any pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in the middle of a campaign? You don’t feel any pressure?

KROFT: Have recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?

KROFT: Where do you go to kind of sort things out on your own, and when do you find time to just be alone with your own thoughts?

RUSH: Okay, so it was Oprah. I just wanted you to hear the differences in the line of questioning. How are you gonna work with those Republicans? Do you feel any pressure? What about your support for the governments that have come to power? So let’s go to what Obama said. Question from Steve Kroft: “You don’t feel any pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in the middle of the campaign to try and change your policy? You don’t feel any pressure at all?”

OBAMA: When it comes to our national security decisions, any pressure that I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people.

RUSH: Right. Yeah.

OBAMA: And I am gonna block out, uh, any noise that’s out there. Now, I feel an obligation — not pressure, but obligation — to make sure that we’re in close consultation with the Israelis on these issues because it affects them deeply. They’re one of our closest allies in the region.

RUSH: (laughing) What’s the question? That’s what I’m wondering: Who are our other allies in the region? He said Egypt’s not an ally, so I don’t know who it leaves. Well, he had to go do a backtrack on that. Let’s see, Jordan? Saudi Arabia? “One of our closest allies” in the Middle East? Well, he could mean Syria. Maybe Libya now. No, not Libya yet. Nah, it will be a while. Qatar! Qatar? No. Iraq? No, no, not Iraq. Bahrain? United Arab Emirates? Abu Dhabi? Iran? Let’s see. Dubai. Dubai Ports Deal! (laughing)

Israel is “one of our closest allies in the region.”

Here’s the next question: “Do you still believe, after three years in this gridlock that we’ve had, that somebody who claims to be an outsider can get things done?” (laughing) Obama just did. He just told the Univision guys (impression): “One thing I learned is, you can’t change Washington from the inside.” All right, so Kroft says, “Do you still believe, after three years gridlock that we’ve had, somebody who claims to be an outsider,” which is what Obama’s trying to do now, can get things accomplished in the Washington?

OBAMA: You know, if you ask me w-w-what’s my biggest disappointment, is that we haven’t changed the tone in Washington as much as I would have liked.

RUSH: What a crock.

KROFT: And you don’t bear any responsibility for that?

OBAMA: I think that, y’know, eh, uh, as president I bear responsibility for everything to some degree, and one of the things I’ve realized over the last two years is that only happens if I’m enlisting to the American people much more aggressively than I did the first two years.

RUSH: What does that mean? Enlisting? See, this is the kind of talk that the left-wing cocktail party circuit swoons over. This is the kind of talk that they think means really superior intelligence. “Yeah, Steve, uh, I need to do a better job of changing the tone in Washington. The biggest disappointment I’ve had is I’ve been unable to change the tone.” You mean when you accuse doctors of doing unnecessary surgery? You mean when you called Romney a felon and maybe a murderer.

And you wonder why you haven’t been able to change the tone in Washington? Then there’s the buck stops here “to some degree.” Did you catch that one? The buck stops here “to some degree.” Well, yeah, I bear responsibility here “to some degree.” Romney’s responsible for some and Bush for the rest of it. And then this is the “bump in the road” quote. This is what Carney’s all offended by. He’s terribly offended that anybody would be critical of Obama for saying the deaths of those four Americans were “bumps in the road.”

Question: “Have the events that took place in Middle East, the recent events in the Middle East, given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?”

OBAMA: Well, I said even at the time that this is gonna be a rocky path. The question presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change.

RUSH: Whoa, whoa.

OBAMA: I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I’m — I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are gonna be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, that one organizing principle has been Islam, the one part of society that hasn’t been controlled completely by the government.

RUSH: Folks, that 39 seconds is dynamite. Let’s go to the top here. “The question presumes that somehow we could have stopped this wave of change.” Mr. President, you fueled it! You wanted credit for it! Nic Robertson of CNN is over there in Tahrir Square asking all these rioters, “Are you happy with what President Obama said about young people getting jobs? What is your opinion, what would you say to President Obama?” And these guys are saying, “Who? He’s got nothing to do with this. We’re taking over the –” Obama tried to claim credit for this. This was a democratic uprising. He said that this was happening in the image of his ’08 campaign. He tried to get in front of this and make it look like he, The Messiah, had inspired what was going on. And now he dares say that the question presumes we coulda stopped this?

He didn’t want to stop this. He was all for the Arab Spring. I’m reminded of the Stalin quote (paraphrasing) “A million dead, that’s a statistic.” Four dead, that’s just a bump in the road. Okay, so he presumes somehow we could have stopped this. “Absolutely right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights.” That’s not what we have. The Muslim Brotherhood is not democracy; it’s not universal rights. It’s Sharia. And Morsi has said so. I don’t care what you think about this or not, but Sharia law, folks, is not democratic. It’s not freedom. It’s not universal rights. “But I continue to be pretty certain that there are gonna be bumps in the road.” Yeah, well, we took him out of context when he said, “You didn’t build that. You didn’t make that happen.” Now we’re taking him out of context when, what’s the bump in the road? Benghazi? What happened in Benghazi? Ambassador dead, three others dead, bump in the road. Carney, “I’m offended anybody…” Yeah, when this guy speaks, he’s so smart, so smart. “You didn’t build that. You didn’t make that happen.” Bumps in the road.

And then, “in a lot of these places the one organizing principle has been Islam, the one part of society that hasn’t been controlled completely by the government”? Who is the Muslim Brotherhood but Islam? Mr. President, I hate to break it to you, but Islam has just come to power in Egypt in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood. The one thing I don’t know, is he complaining about this or is he happy when he says the organizing principle’s been Islam, the one part of society that hasn’t been completely controlled by government. Does he want everything controlled by government? Here he does. I don’t know if he’s complaining.

(interruption)

Well, how do you read it? Right. Okay, so that’s what I’m saying. So the only thing that hasn’t been controlled by government is Islam, and now it is. Islam’s in control now. That’s not a bad thing. That’s what this means to me. But that’s just me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama met with 13 world leaders last year during the UN time. This week he’s meeting with none. Zero world leaders. He’s probably told them all, “Sit tight, I’ll have a lot more flexibility after the election. There nothing I can tell you right now. Just sit tight.” Probably so.